It is sad how these people handle the trees. Both will need severe prunning and may not survive, if that cold damage also got to the roots. The salesman tried to explain that is how fig grows... 

Grasa..

Did you get any pictures? what are you referring to when you say " both" ?

Grasa most of the trees i buy are dead sticks:) or they suffer from transplanting to a larger pot after i buy them or somthing.
Here in my area i think commercial retailers dry the soils intentionally cause the strees in drying the roots maybe brings out more fruit and the commercial retailers want to sell trees with fruit on them and dont care they dry out.
so we buy dead sticks and revive them....
for me all the dead sticks i bought survived. i had a jujube tree from last season and that was dead as stone. i prayed and prayed and even peeled some bark to see some green (it was green :)), finally it is growing leafs now like crazy. 
anyhow 15$ is still not cheap so be carfull

Hi Grasa. I've learned that you have to leave them in their container for the first year so they can fill up the soil before you transplant them. Pretty much all the trees I buy from Lowe's have week roots.

Grasa...I just purchased 4 fig trees from Lowes last week(2 Kadota & 2Hardy Chicago) $9.98 each...they had loads of roots in the original containers, so I uppotted them to 5gal. pots...no sign of life yet, so they're either still dorment or they're dead(it's Ok though , Lowes has one year guarantee on all plants, including fig trees).

Vince make sure, if you do have to return them to Lowe's, that they have all the original tags on them and they are in the original container. They got a little crazy with me, when I had to return an avocado tree that died on me, and said they couldn't refund my money unless it had all that stuff.

Hank...thanks for the advice...I have all the original tags and receipts in an envelope...and the original pots are set aside in my garage...hopefully I won't have to use them.

Bought an LSU Purple at Lowes a couple weeks ago was in good shape $6.98

I put my dormant Lowe's Hardy Chicagos outside this past weekend.  Do or die time! 

I too bought 3 Hardy Chicago just this past week at Lowes. They were in OK condition. The root balls were dried out a bit and pulling away from the container but other than that they seem alright.

Lowes now has a "customer loyalty" card that you can get at their service desk. They use it for marketing/data mining but the upside is that they also have the ability to pull up all of your transactions for the past 2 years (No more having to keep your receipts).

Home Depot has the ability to pull up all of your transactions (within 2 years) by credit/debit card. So if you can remember which card you used, you are in business.

I bought mine last fall and they were root bound.  They were about to drop their leaves and had something like 18 figs on a 2' tree.  They were far from ripe so I plucked them.  After pulling them out of the garage, I noticed the tips were very thin and hard.  No flex at all, whereas my other dormant plants had some give.  I repotted them but we'll see what happens.  Thankfully I have the receipts, pots, and tags.

Hiya, I am a newbe for Figs and Figs4Fun (though I have been reading here for a few months). Last time I purchased plants (blackberries and raspberries) at Lowes, I returned several Raspberries and received a refund. The first ones, I brought the plants into the store. The others were dead and twigs in the ground; they asked me for photos only. So, basically, I rec'd my refund with the photos for the rest.
I wanted some replacement plants but they only had a few that were not really great. So, I asked them for a discount on the ones they had left that I was willing to purchase. I did get a good discount on them.

PS. I am looking for that announcement for scions at the Encanto Farms Nursery. Where's the topic thread?

Here you go Jed, but the cuttings were offered in Feb, sorry.

http://encantofarms.com/Available_Cuttings_2013.html